Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Abiotic stress is the negative impact of non-living factors on the living organisms in a specific environment. [1] The non-living variable must influence the environment beyond its normal range of variation to adversely affect the population performance or individual physiology of the organism in a significant way.
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
Abiotic factors tend to drive production in the estuarine environment, and are mediated by biotic factors. Biotic factors include nutrient uptake and primary production , secondary production of zooplankton , food web and trophic dynamics , energetic transfer, advection and dispersal in and out of the system, survival and mortality , predation ...
A simplified food web illustrating a three-trophic food chain (producers-herbivores-carnivores) linked to decomposers. The movement of mineral nutrients through the food chain, into the mineral nutrient pool, and back into the trophic system illustrates ecological recycling. The movement of energy, in contrast, is unidirectional and noncyclic.
Organic farming typically reduces some environmental impact relative to conventional farming, but the scale of reduction can be difficult to quantify and varies depending on farming methods. In some cases, reducing food waste and dietary changes might provide greater benefits. [ 43 ]
The environmental impact of agriculture involves impacts on a variety of different factors: the soil, water, the air, animal and soil variety, people, plants, and the food itself. Agriculture contributes to a number larger of environmental issues that cause environmental degradation including: climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss ...
[2]: 458 The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem.
Historical factors, such as climate and soil parent materials, shape landscapes above and below ground, but the regional/local abiotic conditions constraint biological activities. These operate at different spatial and temporal scales and can switch on and off different organisms at different microsites resulting in a hot moment in a particular ...